What is seem in the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett is yet another example of the left's ongoing attempt to displace the written Constitution of 1787 with an unwritten one based on progressive dogma.  This has been a continuing process for more than fifty years.  According to Christopher Caldwell in his Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, it began with the civil rights movement, when the Democrats and many of the leading institutions of America started to force a de facto constitution on America.  Caldwell calls it the  "Constitution of 1964."  That was also when the civil rights movement become America's defining principle, and everything — history, written law, attitudes, and even science  — has to be interpreted from its perspective.

The 1787 constitution focused on liberty and ordered rights.  It also limited the scope of the federal government.  In contrast, the Constitution of 1964 is centered on equality, but equality in a revolutionary sense.  At first, this equality was sold to the country at removing discrimination toward blacks and providing them with equal opportunity.  When that did not meet progressive objectives, the push went to demands for equal outcomes.  Affirmative action became racial quotas by another name.

Having achieved that objective, the progressives moved ahead.  Under the banner of equality, space had to be created for any group that thought itself marginalized.  This included not just racial minorities, but also homosexuals, women, illegal aliens, Muslims, and now what's called transsexuals.  This is the Rainbow Coalition of the Democrat Party.  In the view of the progressive left, the only group not deemed marginalized is Christian, white, straight males.  And a group not marginalized in a country of marginalized groups is "privileged."  In the progressive mind, it is therefore a moral necessity to discriminate against white males under the rationale that this will then make everyone equal.  By necessity and design, the progressive idea of equality results in gross inequality in the form of special privileges and preferential treatment for some and disfavor for others.  This is an affront to the Constitution of 1787...and the Civil Rights laws as written.

The progressive view on equality also helps explain why anti-Americanism is so prevalent in the Democrat Party and on the left.  As R.R. Reno explains, coming together as a nation is invariably cast as an act of discrimination by those groups and individuals who do not subscribe to the majority view.  The complaint is that they are not sufficiently included.  And since complete inclusion is a progressive requirement for equality, patriotism is akin to Jim Crow laws and has to go.  Nationalism, too, and for the same reason.

The progressive project flies in the face of human nature.  Therefore, to push its agenda, the left must rely on government coercion to achieve its objectives.  This brings us to a second aspect of the Constitution of 1964.  Governance by principles of the republic as founded has to be replaced by the administrative state, where "expertise" and efficiency take priority over the people's will.  The experts and bureaucrats will decide what is good for society, not the people through their elected representatives.  This results in bigger and non-responsive government accompanied by reams of bureaucratic regulations and red tape.  To sustain this type of system, the progressives need judges who are in accord with it.  ACB is not.

Right now, America operates under two constitutions — the written one of 1787 and the implicit progressive Constitution of 1964.  Neither one is strong enough to completely displace the other.  In my opinion, the progressive constitution seems to have the upper hand.  America would not have Roe v. Wade, homosexual "marriage," and Obamacare otherwise.  This will be especially true if the Democrats sweep in November. 

The Barrett confirmation hearings has nothing to do with her qualifications.  Looking at the matter objectively, Barrett could run legal and intellectual circles around any woman and most men who ever sat on the Supreme Court.  This certainly includes the recently deceased Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  The sole reason for the Democrat resistance to Amy Coney Barrett is that she supports the original constitution as written and not the faux one the progressives need to move their agenda forward.